YouView vs Freeview Play

Comments

“Where’s ‘Jump to Time’ then? And all that other OldGen good stuff we were promised back, including the proper ‘Hide Channels’ and so on?” (Excerpt from ‘One Billboard Outside YouView Towers’, not coming soon to a box near you)

Ah right there’s a difference between hdmi 2.0 and hdmi 2.0a. My mistake I thought it was the same spec. So the T4000 is 2.0, and probably needs 2.0a to get all the HDR goodness working.

2.0a isn’t just some sort of software reconfigure? Is it a change of hardware from 2.0?

From that useful article you quoted above:-

‘......HDR is something that requires serious hardware.....’

HDMI 2.0a brings the ability of the HDMI port to pass HDR; it does not bring the ability of the device to display or output any HDR for the HDMI port to pass.

So while Humax might possibly be able to make a T4000 support HDMI 2.0a in firmware, that is just a prerequisite for HDR, not a bringer of the HDR which this box will never do, as it just doesn’t have HDR hardware inside it. And this is something very unlikely to be addable in firmware.

“Where’s ‘Jump to Time’ then? And all that other OldGen good stuff we were promised back, including the proper ‘Hide Channels’ and so on?” (Excerpt from ‘One Billboard Outside YouView Towers’, not coming soon to a box near you)

So which is better – YouView or Freeview Play?I have used both interfaces, Freeview Play via my Panasonic TV and YouView Via Huma Retail box and now TalkTalk, good and bad on both platforms but who is the winner, let me begin:

My experience using both services is there is only subtly differences. Youview TV Guide could do with a facelift - dark and no mini tv in left or right hand of screen which is a nice feature that all the other players seem to have.

Youview has an extensive search and catch-up ability, is good but all over the place when it comes to features, depending on your viewing platform.

Freeview Play seems to be more consistent the widest choice of TV and setop box support, they offer a buffering zone where as youview rely n accurate recording times and sometimes you miss start or the beginning although this has improved n last 6 months but still an issue of concern to some.

Freeview Play seems to me to be more future-ready. All current Freeview Play TVs have HEVC codec support, which means it opens the door to UHD broadcasts over broadband,

The technical side of Freeview Play is done by Digital UK, which is owned by the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and Arqiva. The same people that have been involved and partner with YouView.

With so many boxes be it freeview, Freeview Play, Youview if the people involved in these projects all got together and produced one decent box which partner invest more into one project and have better apps and services for all to enjoy.

Instead we have a mismatch of boxes produced by same partners, no real direction and each project only gets a fraction of the investment, put your heads together and lets see standard box with more investment into one project than all this messing around. Lets make TV great and more enjoyable and apps for all and deliver a service fit for today.

Freeview Play seems to me to be more future-ready. All current Freeview Play TVs have HEVC codec support, which means it opens the door to UHD broadcasts over broadband,

What is the benefit of broadcasting UHD content to a non-UHD TV?

The TV can look at every four pixels, and pick the one it likes best

“Where’s ‘Jump to Time’ then? And all that other OldGen good stuff we were promised back, including the proper ‘Hide Channels’ and so on?” (Excerpt from ‘One Billboard Outside YouView Towers’, not coming soon to a box near you)

.....(snip).....Instead we have a mismatch of boxes produced by same partners, no real direction and each project only gets a fraction of the investment, put your heads together and lets see standard box with more investment into one project than all this messing around. Lets make TV great and more enjoyable and apps for all and deliver a service fit for today.

Samuel, you might want to ask yourself where the impetus, or even the perceived need, for FreeView Play came from, why it has so many of the same partners as YouView, and which YouView partners are notably absent.

For further research, look at the history of Project Canvas, and the ethos behind it, and how that morphed into YouView, and how the ethos changed after that.

Then you might understand why there are two tribes involved here, and just how unlikely they are to get together

“Where’s ‘Jump to Time’ then? And all that other OldGen good stuff we were promised back, including the proper ‘Hide Channels’ and so on?” (Excerpt from ‘One Billboard Outside YouView Towers’, not coming soon to a box near you)

Although I would like to get a 4k(UHD) smart TV at some point . I am the now happy with Samsung 2013 model 32inch 2013 full HD TV in living room.I also have a 22inch 2012 Samsung full HD tv in my bedroom.I use Netflix a lot, and at times via the Youview box not sure if it’s the standered SS sound that’s coming from Netflix or not. I do have the sound affects on both my Samsung TVs turned on. I have the two screens plus HD package with Netflix that I share the monthly cost with my sister.Whats the sound output on the Amazon Prime app via the Youview box dose anyone know. I have only been using Amazon Prime over 3 weeks now and see 90% of what is included with a Prime is in HD.I have a BT T2100 Youview box that I also use for BT TV and just last month bought a BT retail box to replace the T1000 in my bedroom.

It is a shame that there isn’t (as far as i know`) an ios ipad app that integrates all the current players into a youview type experience without the record facility. I’d like to have a weekly view where you can roll back upto a perhapa a few weeks and hit a programme and it automatically launched the relevant channel player app and plays.

It is a shame that there isn’t (as far as i know`) an ios ipad app that integrates all the current players into a youview type experience without the record facility. I’d like to have a weekly view where you can roll back upto a perhapa a few weeks and hit a programme and it automatically launched the relevant channel player app and plays.

Yes absolutely @Jeffuk1.When the BBC announced that it would make iPlayer content available for four weeks I thought how great it would be if the YouView EPG went back four weeks rather than one. I would imagine there were many reasons why it probably was never considered. YouView has often allowed style to triumph over content, so the idea of an asymmetric EPG would have been unthinkable.

Think about your best friend. How well do you know them? Do you know their favorite things, pet peeves, social tendencies? If they got the wrong order at a restaurant, would they choke it down or send it back? Do you think you could accurately predict how they'd act in any given situation? If they're a good enough friend, the answer is probably yes. Now turn the tables. How well do they know you? Do you think they could predict your behavior just as easily? According to research, you probably don't. Most people believe they see much more of other people than people see of them. That illusion is called asymmetric insight.

Asymmetric - The intended pattern for an asymmetric project changes across the projects function with different parts adapted for particular functions and different reasons.

I think @jimb just means that YouView wouldn’t like the backwards EPG sticking out of the lefthand side of your telly any further than the forward EPG sticks out of the righthand side

But for @Jeffuk1, I recommend the JustWatch app. No backward EPG, and some understandable difficulties in covering everything accurately, but if you type in, say, Bodyguard for the current BBC series, and then choose the apparently unrelated 2016 foreign language film of the same name, it will offer you the BBC iPlayer, where you can seamlessly click through to the current Bodyguard (I’ve filled in the ‘Something Wrong?’ there, so you needn’t).

And it does a bunch of other good stuff, especially if you know what you would like to watch, but can’t remember which Player it is on, or, if a cost option, where it is cheapest.

But for four week’s backwards EPG, the best I can suggest is a pile of old Radio Times’s

“Where’s ‘Jump to Time’ then? And all that other OldGen good stuff we were promised back, including the proper ‘Hide Channels’ and so on?” (Excerpt from ‘One Billboard Outside YouView Towers’, not coming soon to a box near you)

Freeview Play on TVs is, sure, though its competitor there is YouView on Sony TVs, not YouView boxes. There are lots of pros and cons to the Sony TVs - best picture out there, possibly, but the worst OS in Android - but I don’t know how high YouView has figured in the list of pros. (And I hope it is never a con, because those who don’t like it can always turn it off).

In a bid to make my Sony XE90 usable on the OS front Youview had to be sacrificed. The TV is slow enough without the burden of Youview on top of that. I stick to Youview on the T1010 (which surprisingly is still limping on with the odd hard lock or reboot). The standard Freeview EPG on the Sony is good enough for general use.

I would be up for replacing the PVR at some point so it would be nice to see new Youview hardware (even though it probably won't happen). At the moment not sure what I would replace it with if it finally bit the dust.

A Factory Reset usually brings a Sony Android TV back to a usable speed, even on the YouView UI.

Re a YouView box replacement, I love my DTR-T4000, though yes, I yearn for the bright lights of an HDR-capable new model.

But for what you can have right now, eBay (for once) is your friend here.

“Where’s ‘Jump to Time’ then? And all that other OldGen good stuff we were promised back, including the proper ‘Hide Channels’ and so on?” (Excerpt from ‘One Billboard Outside YouView Towers’, not coming soon to a box near you)